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Booby Trap
'' |image= |series= |production=40273-154 |producer(s)= |story=Michael Wagner Ron Roman |script=Ron Roman Michael Piller Richard Danus |director=Gabrielle Beaumont |imdbref=tt0708682 |guests=Susan Gibney as Leah Brahms, Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien, Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan, Albert Hall as Galek Dar, Julie Warner as Christy, Majel Barrett as Computer Voice |previous_production=The Bonding |next_production=The Enemy |episode=TNG C06 |airdate=30 October 1989 |previous_release=The Bonding |next_release=The Enemy |story_date(s)=Stardate 43205.6 |previous_story=The Bonding |next_story=The Enemy }} =Summary= The Enterprise investigates the asteroid-laden sector of space of the final battle between the Menthars and the Promellians, it receives a distress call from a Promellian battlecruiser: Captain Picard directs the ship to investigate. They find the battlecruiser adrift but intact, and Picard, anxious to see the ship for himself, joins the away team as they transport over. They find all the crew long dead at their posts, while a recording by their captain suggests the ship was caught in a Menthar trap. With their investigation complete, the away team returns to the Enterprise to continue on, when they begin to suffer a series of power losses that prevent the use of either impulse or warp drive, and are bombarded by radiation against which their shields cannot provide protection. Picard orders Chief Engineer La Forge to find a way to restore power while a second away team searches for more clues on the Promellian vessel. They discover that the Menthars had previously used aceton assimilators to absorb an enemy ship's energy and redirect it back as hazardous radiation, and that the Enterprise is stuck in the same trap. La Forge realizes that the only way to restore power is to reconfigure the warp drive and traces its design back to the Enterprise's construction and blueprints created by Dr. Leah Brahms. La Forge enters the ship's holodeck to help figure through the engine reconfiguration, whereupon the computer takes it upon itself to create a holographic representation of Brahms herself to assist Geordi in his work. As he does so, he encourages the computer to inject personality into the simulation (by drawing on Brahms' personality profile) and slowly gains romantic feelings for Dr. Brahms. Despite the simulation's help, La Forge is unable to find a way to safely maneuver the Enterprise away, and when Picard orders all extraneous power systems, including the holodeck, shut down to conserve power, La Forge convinces him to allow the holodeck to continue to run. After power is restored to the holodeck the simulated Dr. Brahms recognizes a solution which is to allow the computer to take control of the ship, allowing it to make rapid adjustments to compensate for the trap. La Forge then finds an alternate solution to the problem which is to completely reduce the power output from the Enterprise and maneuver it out of the field by manual control with only two thrusters. Picard and La Forge decide that computers cannot account for human intuition and elect to go with the manual approach. Picard takes the helm himself to skillfully carry out the operation, successfully moving the Enterprise from the trap. Once free and with power restored, the Enterprise fires photon torpedoes to destroy the Promellian craft and the asteroids around it to prevent others from falling into the trap. =Errors and Explanations= Internet Movie Database Character error # Data seems amazed that Captain Picard has used the gravity of a large piece of debris in order to slingshot the Enterprise out of the energy field, yet using large bodies' gravitational force in order to propel spacecraft would have at this point been an ancient practice, as NASA has used this principle since at least the 1970s. Data has a more encyclopedic knowledge of everything than anyone else aboard the Enterprise; surely he would have thought of this, as well as the ship's computer and probably dozens of others on board. Data's amazement is due to Picard's awarness of the technique, not the technique itself.'IMDB entry tt0708682 Nit Central # ''Aaron Dotter on Tuesday, January 23, 2001 - 8:18 am: There was one thing that I did not get. Was that an asteroid field, or the wreckage of the planet? If it was the planet, how could it have been laced with those assimilators? '''They were probably deployed during the battle which resulted in the planet breaking up. # In the later episode Galaxy's Child Geordi meets the real Leah Brahms and finds out that she's married, which disappoints him. Wouldn't her personnel file (which he looked at in this episode) state that she is married? Wannabe Trek Writer on Tuesday, January 23, 2001 - 2:36 pm: Her personnel file probably mentions it. But perhaps that's just an item he missed or intentionally (though subconsciously) overlooked. # Gary C. on Tuesday, January 30, 2001 - 2:09 am: I can't believe that Geordi would be trying to outsmart the trap all by himself. He has a engineering staff and the other departments as well to brainstorm with. But we see him walking around talking to himself about what to do. What a hero! I think in reality I'd have Data and Wesley and any other smart person helping Geordi with a plan, considering the seriousness of the situation. Of course, if he did that, there wouldn't have been a sub-plot. They're probably busy with other duties. # Picard, Worf and Data beam over to the battleship, and there is good air to breathe and the artificial gravity is still working! After 1,000 years? I can imagine what the smell was like in there with those corpses. Those systems could be temporarly receiving power from Enterprise. # Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Tuesday, July 10, 2001 - 2:26 am: Why is Picard amazed at the simplicity of the Bridge of the Promellian ship? Earlier he said he was amazed that the propulsion units were intact and even revealed that he had built a Promellian ship in a bottle, so obviously there must be some records of what Promellian ships looked like, Are we supposed to believe that there were plenty of records of the ship's exterior, but none of the interior? The records could be limited in scope. # There is no such thing as All Stop in space, because everything drifts. So why has the Promellian ship stayed in the middle of this booby trap for a thousand years? There isn't enough inertia to allow the ship to escape the gravitational fields of the asteroids. # Geordi tells the computer to recreate Utopia Planitia on Holodeck 3, without even checking to see if anyone might be using it. dotter31 on Friday, April 14, 2006 - 6:53 pm: Several possibilities: Maybe one holodeck is kept available for work-related purposes. Maybe Geordi knows which holodecks are available, since he is in charge of Engineering he would know which ones are powered and which ones aren't. Also, wouldn't the computer have told him if the holodeck was occupied? # When Data is feeding the data coils into the computer, there are no asteroids floating by the bubble window on top of the Enterprise. If there are no asteroids above the Enterprise, then why not point the ship straight up and activate the impulse engines? Perhaps there are some asteroids above the Enterprise, which can't be seen through the bubble window. # Teral on Tuesday, August 14, 2001 - 4:26 pm: Is it Worf's markmanship or is it the Federation targeting scanners that pretty much sucks? When Riker orders the destruction of the trap and specifies the Promelian cruiser as the target only one of the 4 torpedoes hits the cruiser, the other 3 hits asteroids. The asteroids may have drifted into the line of fire. # Once again the crew of the Enterprise destroys an old space wessel instead of saving it for examination. Apparently these Promelians and their conflict with the Menthars was quite legendary in the AQ or at least in the Federation. Wouldn't it be a scoop out of proportion for any museum or historian to actually have a real Promelian cruiser. Picard himself notes that the Promelian design is remarkably simple and efficient. Yet they willingly destroyes the ship instead of preserving it for study. Yes yes, I know that they was thinking about the trap, but would it be that difficult to establish some kind of warning signal around the asteroid field until the assimilators could be disabled? It may not be possible to disable the assimilators. # John A. Lang on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 - 10:03 am: Once the Enterprise breaks free of the booby trap, Picard orders the destruction of the ancient ship. Excuse me, Picard...it was the asteroids surrounding the ancient ship that was the cause of the problem...not the ancient ship itself. Why not just destroy the asteroids? Like Picard said at the beginning, "That ship belongs in a museum." Darth Sarcasm on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 - 4:33 pm: Presumably, most ships would avoid navigational hazards like an asteroid field. Unless, of course, some Good Samaritan spotted what seemed to be a ship in distress trapped in the field. margie on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 11:48 am: I agree with Darth. Picard wanted to destroy the ship to prevent anyone else from becoming curious about it and end up trapped also. # KAM on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - 3:05 am: Why not post warning bouys to warn of the trap? Some races, such as the Ferengi, will mis-interpret the pressence of warning bouys, and assume that there is something valuable aboard the Promellian ship. # Why not fire photon torpedoes at the asteroids to blow up the assimilators? They will provide even more energy for the assimilators that survive the impact. # Why not attach GAS canisters onto the Promellian ship? (As air is expelled from the canisters they will move the ship.) Any ship coming close enough to attach the canisters would become trapped themselves, as would any remote delivery device. # dotter31 on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 9:05 am: Did they ever say what the Enterprise was actually doing there, since they weren't expecting to find the ship? (just curious) Josh M on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - 11:45 pm: I don't think they come out and say it, but from Wesley's comment at the beginning of the episode, it seems that they may have been doing some historical research on the war, or at least the site of the final battle. # Don F (TNG Moderator) (Dferguson) on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - 3:10 pm: So I wonder why the Photon torpedos worked when they fired them in the end , taking out several astroids which presumibly contained assimilators. Yet previously in the episode their weapons had no effect. The final torpedos were fired from outside the trap area. # Robert Chase (Darsithis) on Tuesday, June 04, 2013 - 1:59 am: Geordi tells Leah the ship has "tens of thousands" of lightyears on it. But doesn't that seem like a lot for when the Enterprise was only about 3 years old? Figuring from Voyager's 75,000 lightyears = 75 years, seems like the ship would need decades of service for 20,000+ ScottN (Scottn) on Tuesday, June 04, 2013 - 10:39 am: Well, it did get a few billion lightyears added onto it in "Where No One Has Gone Before". Granted, it probably didn't pass through all of them... =Notes= =Sources= Category:Episodes Category:The Next Generation